The Boys Town Residential Treatment Center (RTC) is a medically managed facility for children who need a higher level of care than our family home program. The RTC gives them a secure, family friendly environment, which many of the kids are getting for the first time. Through positive reinforcement and low staff-to-child ratio, Boys Town's RTC provides the tools these children need to become healthy, happy and confident.

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Laura: If I had not come to Boys Town I definitely wouldn't be alive. I was at the breaking point before I came. I had gotten to the highest point of pills I'd ever taken, which was...it was close to 100.

Peg: These are kids that have hurt themselves, threatened to hurt other people, lack the ability to cope with certain things in an appropriate manner. And as a result, need a supportive, secure environment, which is the Residential Treatment Center.

Peg: Several of our children come to the Residential Treatment Center on high levels of psychotropic medication. Our ultimate goal is to get our kids off of medication if at all possible. We believe that our psycho educational model helps our kids learn different ways to cope, so medication isn't as necessary.

Peg: Our psycho educational model is built on positive reinforcement of positive behaviors. And then teaching children how to replace those negative or more maladaptive behaviors, to where we can help them learn that there's better ways to cope with that and better ways to handle that.

Dennis: These kids are in and out of foster home placements. They're in and out of homes of relatives, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and so, there is this instability that begins to build up in them. They become experts in wanting to get kicked out of different treatment facilities or different home environments. Here, it's stable, it's safe, it's family-friendly, and it's a very effective environment to work with kids who typically try to get kicked out of placements.

Peg: We have a ratio in the state that mandates a four child to one staff. We do better than that. We do three children to one staff and/or oftentimes two to one when it comes to that. Our kids benefit from that lower staff to child ratio because they get more individualized care and more individualized teaching.

Laura: I was talking to one of the therapists and I had said, you know...she was listing a bunch of things that she noticed I did in the initial interview, and that kind of thing, like picking up my fingernails and stuff like that. And I'd said to her, you know, "Why did you notice that?" or, "How did you notice that? You know, no one's ever said anything like this to me." And she said that, "Well, I guess that's Boys Town. We notice. We care." And that was kind of the rest of the RTC was. They noticed they cared, they helped, which I had never had before.

Laura: I would say to staff a huge "thank you." They really helped me turn a corner and I will always appreciate that.

Boys Town is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit recognized by the IRS, and all donations to Boys Town are tax deductible in accordance with IRS regulations. Boys Town follows a policy of non-discrimination in accordance with the law.